Homecoming
by artistic mishap
Summary: Norah Alenko wondered how she missed it. The signs had always been there, but somehow she'd never put two-and-two together. Post ME3 AU.


**Homecoming**

Norah Alenko stood at her large living room window, allowing the Okanagan sun to press onto her face. Behind her, a vid was surveying the damage that littered London. It looked like one of those disaster flicks Mikhail used to love. Norah couldn't look, wouldn't look. She knew it was silly – she'd received word from Kaidan weeks ago, saying that he was alive and relatively uninjured, that he would be home as soon as possible – but the thought that her boy, her only child, had waded through that mess fighting the stuff of nightmares... No. It was better to enjoy the sunshine.

That didn't stop her ragtag team of companions from watching, though. Norah glanced over her shoulder, taking in her sister, Ana, and her nephew, Benjamin. There was also her father, Thomas, who sat in his recliner watching the news the way he had for the majority of his life, seemingly unimpressed with the larger scale of the issues presented.

"War is war," she heard him say, voice gravelly and tired, "and it's always messy."

"I think it's a little different this time, Dad," replied Ana with extreme scepticism. "There's never been an alien invasion intent on killing us all."

Her father made as if to interrupt with a retort – probably something about the turians and Shanxi, if Norah knew him at all – when the vid began to laud the efforts of one Commander Vea Shepard. Despite herself, Norah turned to pay attention. This woman had been Kaidan's XO, and he'd only ever spoken highly of her.

"She's hot," said Ben, in typical seventeen year old fashion.

"Don't talk about a war hero like that," snapped Ana.

"What?" said Ben, defensive. "It's true!"

Norah couldn't help but agree. Though the picture was several years old, it showed a striking Commander Shepard in her dress blues, standing tall before a backdrop emblazoned with the Alliance logo. The Commander's skin was a dusty mocha colour, harkening back to somewhere in the East Indies, Norah thought, and her hair was a dark brown or black. Her eyes were exotic, nearly feline, passed down from some other ancestor no doubt. They were a green so bright, it was almost off-putting. It seemed as though she stared directly through the screen and into the audience.

"Hard to imagine that she's the one who took down all them Reapers," said her father, but his tone wasn't insulting. It was thoughtful.

"Kaidan always said she was the best," Norah allowed quietly. Behind her, clouds snuffed out the sunshine, and Norah couldn't help the shiver that danced across her skin.

"When's he supposed to get here?" asked Ana, leaning around Ben.

"Sometime today," said Norah.

"He's not going to show any faster just 'cause you're standing in front of the window," commented her father.

Norah rolled her eyes, and despite her anxiety, moved into the kitchen. She needed to do something with her hands, needed to be busy. She opened the fridge and found that produce filled most of the spaces. Flour had become increasingly hard to find, as had sugar, and though some local butchers were selling fresh meat from the few livestock farms left in the Okanagan, it was always exorbitantly priced. Most of what they had was from the orchard down the block, and the vegetable farm several klicks away.

Although the town had never been huge to begin with, it now felt like a ghost town. People she'd once known were now, in all likelihood, dead somewhere.

The thought made Norah want to curl into a ball and cry, but she steeled herself and pulled out some vegetables. She began to chop, methodically, adding them to a large pot she placed on the stove. From the back of the fridge, she pulled out some vegetable stock. Soup, then, though she knew her father would complain. As a meat-and-potatoes man, switching almost entirely to produce was not an easy adjustment.

At least Kaidan was all right. From his brief, vague messages, she'd gathered that he'd been relatively lucky during the Battle of London. A few bruises, a deep laceration on one side, and minor hearing impairment in his right ear. That's what he'd written, like it was nothing, like the thought of exactly _how_ he'd gotten those injuries wasn't enough to make Norah feel faint. When she'd written back, she'd urged him to come to her, to allow her to take care of him. She could still remember his curt response.

_I can't – I have to find Shepard._

Everyone knew what had happened over Earth. How the Citadel had exploded, sending out some beam that neutralized the Reapers. How debris had rained down over the planet, most of it burning up in atmo. How the Commander had supposedly been on board, and the likelihood of her survival was slim. Kaidan knew, she was sure, yet there wasn't even a hint of hesitation in his note. More than that, there was some lingering responsibility. She could tell that there was no way Kaidan was going to leave before doing his best to find the Commander, so she'd simply told him to come when he was able.

A week and a half ago, she'd gotten a longer message saying he'd be coming home. There'd been some brief mention of bringing someone along, but Norah didn't care if he brought all of London so long as he was there with them.

She was stirring the soup when she heard the door open, nearly dropping her ladle. She set it down and clambered out of the kitchen, toward the front entrance. When he saw her, Kaidan gave that small shy smile that he'd mastered when he was a boy. She wasn't sure when she started to cry, but she threw herself into his arms, this son of hers. He smelled of smoke and fuel, of things she couldn't name, but underneath that all, he smelled like himself. They stayed like that for a moment, until he started to gently extricate himself from her arms, brushing the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.

"I'm okay," Kaidan said, and he was. His hair was longer than she remembered, and it looked as though he hadn't shaved in a few days. Dark bags slung themselves under his eyes, and he was obviously exhausted, dressed in dirty military regs with two bags slung over one shoulder.

His face lit up when Ana, Ben and her father clambered closer, and he gave each of them a quick hug in turn. Ana's face was a mirror of Norah's own, and both Ben and her father had bright eyes and were blinking rapidly. Kaidan took this in stride, dropping the bags next to the door.

"Can you guys just hang on a minute?" he asked, and seeing their expressions, added, "I brought someone with me. A – a friend. I need to help her inside."

"I'm injured, Kaidan – not incapable." A woman's voice came from the front door, and everyone turned to see a woman limping into the house, her weight balanced on a cane.

Norah felt both a surge of relief and guilt at seeing the woman. Relief because, by comparison, Kaidan seemed to be in perfect condition. Guilt because, well, the woman's arm (the one not holding the cane) was completely bandaged and held in a sling, with a few casts on each of her fingers. Her leg was obviously a great source of pain. It was the woman's face that made Norah's throat catch – it was a checker board of purple bruises and cuts. Norah met her eyes and – green eyes, exotic in shape, oh god, this was – the woman, no, Shepard, no, Commander Shepard smiled.

"Vea Shepard," she managed, her voice breathy. "Nice to meet you."

Kaidan was frowning, the blue of his biotics flaring around his hands as he reached out for her. "I told you to wait in the shuttle. I was going to come help you with your wheelchair."

"I hate that damn chair," snapped Shepard, somehow moving out his reach and further into the house simultaneously.

"The doctor said you were supposed to stay off your leg, Vea," retorted Kaidan. Norah couldn't remember the last time he looked so angry.

Shepard didn't reply, but looked over to the vid screen where they were once again showing her Alliance portrait. She scowled. "I hate that picture. Why do they always have to use that one?"

Kaidan snaked one arm under both of hers, supporting her torso, and the other under her knees, picking her up. Shepard squawked angrily, and levelled on Kaidan the most fearsome glare Norah had ever seen. Kaidan didn't seem to notice. He said, "Mom, can you get some warm water?"

Both Norah and Ben jumped, then moved onto their respective jobs. Kaidan carried Shepard into the living room, placing her gently on the couch. She and the rest of the family shared a look, and by unspoken consent, they all moved into the kitchen, though Ben stared wistfully in the Commander's direction.

By the time Norah entered with the water and some clean cloths, he'd placed Shepard's foot on the coffee table, having already removed Shepard's shoe and rolled up her loose pant leg. Norah felt a jolt of surprise as she saw that blood that was painted down her leg, and the nasty gash that lay open. She set the bowl of water near him, placing the cloth inside.

"You've aggravated the wound," sighed Kaidan, gingerly pulling off the last of the tape from around the wound.

Shepard winced, but turned her attention on Norah. "I don't think I caught your name. You're Kaidan's mother, right?"

"Norah," she agreed with a glance to Kaidan. Normally, he'd have been embarrassed at his lack of propriety, but he barely seemed to notice the conversation at all. He wrung out the cloth and started to clean her leg. Something in the way he touched Shepard made Norah feel as though she were intruding on a private moment. She started to back out of the room.

Shepard's voice was the definition of annoyance. "Kaidan, you don't have to do this. I can do it."

"Damn it, Vea," said Kaidan, sounding weary and irritated all at once. He grabbed the Commander's hand, holding it tight. "Let me take care of you. _Please._"

Norah rounded the corner, but to her great shame, she stopped out of view to eavesdrop.

"I took down Sovereign and the Collectors and the Reapers," argued Shepard. "I'm better than limping around like some cripple. I hate that chair, I hate this can, and I hate not being able to walk on my own damn feet."

"You're injured," countered Kaidan, "and you're pushing yourself too hard. You've been lucky – too lucky. Let's just, let's not push it, okay? I don't think I could handle it, if, if -"

"Kaidan," said Shepard, and it was filled with an infinite gentleness. "Kaidan, I'm right here. I survived. We made it."

It took Norah a moment to qualify the sound that came next. She felt an even greater rush of shame when she realized she was hearing her son weep, and imagined his face buried in Vea Shepard's lap. Shepard was whispering things, the words lost to Norah, but it didn't matter because she was already moving away, giving them their privacy. She needed to check on her soup.

She was met with three expectant looks when she reentered the kitchen. Ana was looking after the soup, while her father and Ben were seated at the small breakfast nook. Ben seemed to be thrumming with nervous excitement, wringing his hands in front of him.

"That's Commander Shepard," he said, gesticulating wildly. "Do you think I could ask her for an autograph?"

"Don't you dare!" hissed Ana. She glanced at Norah. "Did you know she was coming?"

Norah shook her head mutely, leaning her weight on the counter, her arms crossed in front of her. She was pouring over everything that Kaidan had ever said about the Commander, trying to see how she'd missed it. There were the vid-calls when he was stationed on the SR1, recounting stories (always vague) of Shepard with quiet exuberance, his eyes twinkling. At the time, she'd chalked it up to the adventure of their mission, whatever it was. He'd been working with a Spectre, after all, and for the first time in his career, his crew had included aliens.

But then there was the funeral following the Normandy's destruction. Kaidan had come home on leave the week following. He'd planned activities for the family with a frantic energy that had scared her. When she'd broached the subject, slowly, tactfully, all that feigned energy had seeped away, leaving him a shell of himself. The only thing he'd ever said about the matter was, "She ordered me to leave her behind." Norah had assumed it was survivor's guilt, then.

When it turned out that Shepard hadn't died at all, Norah watched how Kaidan's face tightened every time she appeared on the news vids. He resolutely refused to talk about it, though he'd stare wistfully at the images when he thought she wasn't looking. Even then, she'd felt only a sort of detached betrayal on his behalf, knowing how he had suffered under her ruse. She hadn't seen it for what it was.

Well, she saw it now, and she wasn't sure how she felt about it, to be honest. Commander Shepard was a hero, no question. She'd saved the world – no, the galaxy – but Norah couldn't help but remember the vids following the incident on Torfan. Mikhail had shaken his head, muttering about it being a damn waste, even though Norah knew he held no love for the batarians. Norah herself had been horrified at the thought that this woman would throw away the lives of so many soldiers. When Kaidan had messaged them to say that Shepard was his new XO, her heart had contracted painfully, and Mikhail had adopted a silent, contemplative demeanour for a few days.

It was only after Eden Prime, after Kaidan assuaged their fears by mentioning that Shepard had saved his life, or at least his sanity – though he would never say from what, only that he'd gotten himself in trouble and Shepard had bailed him out at great expense to her own well-being – that she and Mikhail had hunkered down and accepted that perhaps his placement wouldn't be so bad, after all.

"So what sort of punishment am I going to get if I ask for her autograph?" asked Ben.

"I'm telling you," said Ana, adding pepper to the soup, "I will disown you."

Ben contemplated this. Finally, he said, "It might be worth it."

"She doesn't deserve to be bothered," said her father, finally, laying his hands flat on the table. "Can't you see the poor woman has been through enough without your petty requests?"

Ben looked as though he'd been punched. From the entrance to the kitchen came a soft laugh – Kaidan's soft laugh.

"Wow, Granddad, nice to know you can still lay on the guilt." Kaidan carried the bowl of now bloody water before him like an offering. He dumped it down the sink. With forced casualness and an impish smile, he crossed his arms over his chest. "But Ben – the last guy that pestered Shepard got a gun to the face."

From the other room came the shout of, "I told you to stop telling that story out of context! It makes me sound like a damned sociopath!"

Kaidan chuckled then, and Norah realized it had been a long time since he had been so himself. She jumped slightly when his eyes moved to meet hers, his gaze soft but knowing.

He'd always been an exceptionally observant child, quiet with his thoughts, and his time in the biotics program had only solidified that part of his personality. You couldn't tell that he'd been emotional only minutes before. He gestured slightly with his head, and she followed him out of the room. They stood out on the front step, the door swinging shut behind them.

"You're in love with her," said Norah, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them.

Kaidan dug his hands into his pockets with a slight shrug. A small, nearly sad smile tugged at his lips. "Yeah."

"How long?"

It took him a long time to answer that question, his eyes flickering back and forth, surveying some evidence that she couldn't see. Finally, he said, "I don't know. From the beginning, I guess."

Norah was tentative. "And she loves you back?"

"Yeah," said Kaidan, and his voice was filled with wonderment, as though he couldn't quite believe it. Seeing her expression, he frowned slightly. "She's not what the media paints her to be, Mom. She's a person. She tries hard to be more, to live up to everyone's expectations, but she's still human." He paused, hunching his shoulders. "I wish I could've been with her, at the end. When I found her, she..." He couldn't finish, his voice clogged with emotion.

She wanted to hug her son, knowing now what that message meant, knowing that there had been some desperate need under those simple words, knowing that he was waiting on any scrap of news. She knew, because she'd stood in those shoes when Mikhail went missing.

Her heart clenched at what he would have said to know that their son, their Kaidan, had fallen in love with not just any woman, but Commander Shepard.

Norah felt her eyes prickle again. She laid a hand on her son's stubbled cheek and smiled.


End file.
